Pros

Cons

Key Specifications

Review Price: £16000.00

Single-chip DLP projector

Tri-LED illumination

60,000 hours claimed lamp life

Full colour calibration tools

10,000:1 claimed contrast ratio

While this might sound an odd thing to say about a video projector, the Digital Projection M-Vision Cine LED has a face for radio. We wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s so ugly only its mother could love it, perhaps, but its drab finish, style-free sculpting, oddly off-centre lens and squat chunkiness are certainly a million miles from the suave, urbane sophistication of recent projectors from the likes of JVC and, especially, Sim2.

The Sim2 comparison is particularly appropriate, as it happens. For with its meaty £16k price tag and use of a single-chip DLP device illuminated by a trio of LED lights, the M-Vision Cine LED sits right alongside Sim2’s MICO 50 in the premium AV firmament. Which is absolutely fine, of course, so long as it can at least match that rival in terms of cold, hard video performance.

While the M-Vision Cine LED might lose out to the MICO 50 aesthetically, though, we should say that the Digital Projection model is incredibly robustly built, and sports the sort of weight we’ve come to associate with completely uncompromising innards.

Happily turning our attention to the M-Vision Cine LED’s rear, we find a decent enough suite of connections. The headliners are two HDMIs, two 12V trigger ports, a standard component video input, plus separate D-Sub and BNC component jacks for PC use. A third HDMI might have been nice for £16k, but then Digital Projection is hardly alone in only offering two. And in any case, we guess anyone able to fork out £16k for a projector via a custom install channel will also have plenty of HDMI switching options – most likely a high quality AV receiver.

Setting the M-Vision Cine LED up is a surprisingly manual affair. Zoom and focus are adjusted via rings around the lens, and horizontal and vertical image shifting requires the application of an Allen key into two extremely fiddly holes hidden under the removable Digital Projection logo on the projector’s top.

While it’s a little surprising that Digital Projection doesn’t provide motorised controls for all these image adjustments, the precision with which you can tweak them using the manual interfaces is extreme. Plus, of course, anyone buying this projector will have it professionally installed, so the more fiddly aspects of its installation aren’t something that will need to trouble you.